Tag: ntp

Network Time Protocol (NTP) is used to synchronize system clocks of different hosts over network. All managed hosts can synchronize their time with a designated time server called an NTP server. An NTP server on the other hand synchronizes its own time with any public NTP server, or any server of your choice. The system clocks of all NTP-managed devices are synchronized to the millisecond precision.

In a corporate environment, if they do not want to open up their firewall for NTP traffic, it is necessary to set up in-house NTP server, and let employees use the internal server as opposed to public NTP servers. In this tutorial, we will describe how to configure a CentOS system as an NTP server. Before going into the detail, let’s go over the concept of NTP first.

Network Time Protocol (NTP) presents an unique ability for companies to synchronize the clocks of all the systems within the company. Time synchronization is important for many reasons ranging from application time stamps to security to proper log entries. When an organization’s systems all maintain different clock times, it becomes very difficult from a troubleshooting standpoint to determine when and under what conditions a particular event might be occurring.

NTP provides an easy way to ensure that all systems will maintain the correct time which in turn can greatly simplify the burden on administrators/tech support.